The director of film musical La Land has won the top prize at the Directors Guild of America Awards ahead of the Oscars later this month.
Damien Chazelle, 32, said he aimed to “celebrate the act of dreaming”.
He and many other directors also addressed President Donald Trump’s travel ban in their speeches.
Mr Chazelle praised Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who has said he will not now attend the Oscars and said excluding filmmakers was “anti-art”.
Has La Land been overhyped?
Teaching Ryan Gosling piano in just three months
He said Mr Farhadi – whose film The Salesman is nominated for an Oscar – came from “a country my government tells me I shouldn’t be in dialogue with”.
Iran is one of the seven mainly-Muslim countries affected by President Trump’s order, which has been temporarily suspended by a federal court judge.
Last month La Land broke the record for the most Golden Globe Awards, winning seven prizes.
Meanwhile Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu, who won an award last year for The Revenant, called the US political situation “a bad remake of one of the worst stories of the last century”.
Other winners at the ceremony included Garth Davis for the film Lion.
It tells the true story of an Indian man who was lost as a five-year-old and 25 years later used Google Earth to retrace his steps to his hometown and his birthmother, not knowing the name of either.
The film had given some refugees the courage to find their families, he said.
The ceremony also saw Sir Ridley Scott, director of films including Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator, receive the 35th Directors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award.
